50 Interesting Ocean Articles on Wikipedia

I apologize in advance for what I am about to do to you. Last Thanksgiving I came across one of those list of 50 Interesting Wikipedia Articles. It lead me down a long, meandering course of obscure but fascinating reading that swallowed up the whole afternoon (and part of the next morning). After finishing, I thought it would interesting to compile a similar list devoted to the ocean. So after a couple weeks of bookmarking, I’ve found enough to share. My only other criteria in making this list was to find articles that were reasonably detailed and fairly well-conformed to Wikipedia standards. I expect some of these will be familiar to any old salts out there. But I found that even for topics I was reasonably familiar with, there were always some undiscovered details left at the bottom. This is not an exhaustive list. I have half a bucket of additional links left to share. So if you known about some interesting ocean-related Wikipedia articles, please leave a comment, and I’ll add it to a future post.

And again, sorry for all the time you are about to lose.

1. Cetology of Moby-Dick
2. Water intoxication
3. Byford Dolphin
4. Garum
5. Coastline paradox
6. Aspidochelone
7. Rogue wave
8. Mermaid problem
9. Dolos
10. Isinglass
11. Project Jennifer
12. Jolly Roger
13. Caridoid escape reaction
14. Green flash
15. Beaufort scale
16. Shoaling and schooling
17. Narco submarine
18. Charlie the Tuna
19. Ichthys
20. Islomania
21. Jason Islands
22. And the Sea Will Tell
23. Monkey’s fist
24. Pearl of Lao Tzu
25. Sub Marine Explorer
26. Heinrich event
27. Symbion
28. War of the Pacific
29. Guano Islands Act
30. Crocker Land Expedition
31. Diving watch
32. Hydronym
33. posh
34. Thule
35. Cornelius Drebbel
36. New South Greenland
37. Ammolite
38. Egg War
39. Grog
40. Walter Garstang
41. Campbell Island, New Zealand
42. Impressment
43. Machias Seal Island
44. Pole of inaccessibility
45. Freedom of Navigation
46. Tyrian purple
47. Electropositive shark repellent
48. Exclusive Economic Zone
49. Dazzle camouflage
50. Sea silk

Still got some time left on the clock? Try checking out these additional links.

• The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia
• 50 more of Wikipedia’s most interesting articles
• Best of Wikipedia

Incidentally, the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, will be one of the speakers at TEDx Tampa Bay this Friday. I got a ticket to attend (YEAH! ). Normal protocol for these events is to limit liveblogging, so I am not sure how much coverage I can provide but stay tuned for details.

Tagged as: Wikipedia